


Dicetown (A Love Story About Someone Who Tries)

by TongueTiedandSqueamish



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, F/M, Just gonna take time, We're gonna get to a better place
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2019-11-24 22:05:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18170435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TongueTiedandSqueamish/pseuds/TongueTiedandSqueamish
Summary: It's an old song, but people can tell the story another way, where the King is a Queen and the hungry young girl is a tired old man. But what changes in that tale, and what stays the same? Who's singing at the end, and what kind of song is it supposed to be?





	1. Alone In Our Own Rooms

**Author's Note:**

> All right all right I've been listening to this musical on repeat and this idea clutched me hard and I needed to write it down.  
> It might read a bit stilted, because I'm writing this haphazardly between a lot of other obligations, but I hope you enjoy anyway!

Hermes rubbed the back of his neck and kicked at the dirt under his heel. “Ain’t something a little fishy here?”

The Fates hummed, forever hovering just out of sight. “Don’t look so suspicious, Hermes. Everything’s all right. Nothing changes, Hermes. You should know this sight.”

“See now, I’m wise to you. What have you done?” Hermes stabbed a thick finger in the direction of the dusty road, where a broad-shouldered man in dirty work clothes was walking slump-shouldered with exhaustion. “Why is Hades out of his grave? He’s not even wearing a suit, for Chrissake.”

The Fates laughed under their breaths. “Come on now, take a step back. There ain’t no proud brow, no stiff back. What does that mean, brother? This ain’t the Hades you know; he’s working at another show.”

“Did you do this?”

They grinned. He could feel it in the air, hear it in their words. “We see. We don’t predict, we don’t pick.”

He whirled around, but the Fates had already danced away, quick as a fox. “The story’s supposed to stay the same,” he snapped. “This isn’t some sorta game.”

“This story stays the same.”

Hermes cast a skeptical eye over the scene, how Hades rubbed his eyes and yawned and picked the dirt out from under his nails. He had never seen him so open, so human, even when Orpheus was plying him with his sweet music. He lingered on the sight, waiting for the King of the Underworld to drop the strange act, and then he sighed. “All right,” he said. “Have it your way. Let’s tell this one.”

When Hades glanced over his shoulder, he saw nothing but dust getting kicked up the temperamental wind.

\--~~+~~--

Hades liked the railroad station. It was small, a couple dozen benches laid on gray concrete and a wide loading platform, with a train track that marred the bright green land like an interminable line of stitches. Hades didn’t have a ticket, but he sat among the waiting passengers, bones aching, heart aching, his hat pulled down over his eyes so all he could see were scuffling shoes and the frayed cuffs of hand-sewn pants. Every day, the train broke the quiet with its shrill whistle, its heavy and powerful body screeching to a halt, chugging its thick gray smoke into the sky. Hades liked the blunt usefulness of it, lovely in its inelegance.

It was too bright in springtime. Everything glowed like a neon sign. It was nice – Hades wasn’t about to turn down fresh food or warm wind on his cheeks – but the lively colors split his head. Hades wanted to stare at dull concrete. The monotony was calming.

People were already singing; he could hear them over the hill whooping and strumming their guitars loud. He tuned them out, focused on the concrete. Here people were quiet, murmuring about the generosity of the Queen, asking about the pay down below, saying goodbye.

Hades tipped his hat up and glanced around.

Nope. Nothing.

He went home to his empty little cottage in the woods, stoked the fire until every room was hot like summer, and then he fell asleep.

 --~~+~~--

Sometimes, Orpheus forgot what sunlight looked like. Whenever it happened, he froze in panic, his breath shallow and fast as his mind raced – sunlight! What had that been? Warm, but how? Like warm water, but not wet. Like the glow of a fire, except…except it never flickered. It was steady, the bravest presence in the sky. Finally, a memory surfaced of lying in a field on a hot, sunny day and Orpheus moved again.

Eurydice laughed, a little warily. “You’re gonna fall down a mineshaft drifting off like that.”

“I would have to get past the security checkpoint for that,” Orpheus said. His voice was flat, his eyes on his fingers. No calluses.

He had no sense of time. He napped during the day, stayed awake all night. Dinner was breakfast, lunch was dinner. No matter how many clocks Eurydice plastered around their big house, around the city, Orpheus could never figure out whether it was noon or midnight.

“No one works at midnight!” Eurydice told him, exasperated.

He never thought to check. Down here, he felt blind. He felt deaf. He shivered. It felt hard to think. The darkness whispered to him, asking, _Are you dead, music man? Was this your wife’s grand plan?_

He laid in bed, Eurydice next to him, and he looked up at the ceiling and imagined stars. When he couldn’t, he took Eurydice’s hand and held on against the flinch of the cold. Once his hand was as good as a block of ice, he closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

 --~~+~~--

Persephone breathed in a long breath like sipping nectar straight from the air. Spring! Thrill was in spring. Open air, birds singing, everything growing. Nothing in the world could compare to the feeling of fresh grass under her feet or the cool rush of meltwater in a creek or the sudden burst of energy from every living thing. The non-stop excitement wriggled into her limbs, spurning her on to chase it northward.

She grinned at the passing landscape, waving to the passerby and allowing herself the distraction of each thing that caught her eye. She paused to examine a flower. She tutted over the scored bark of a tree. She took a swim in a lake. She had dinner in a kind, ramshackle village. She took a nap in a cornfield. This was what a good life was. When she was hungry, she ate berries and plucked fruit. When she was tired, the stars were always good company. She sat around a campfire and passed a bottle of whiskey among the others. She winked at the younger man who had looked at her shyly all night. She left without saying goodbye. It was the only kind of life worth living, chasing pleasure, always on the move.

She wandered through a field, picking the darker blooms and weaving them together as she walked. It was a good day. She laughed. Hell, it was _always_ a good day! Nothing in the world could stop a good thing like this.

 --~~+~~--

“Good morning, Queen!”

“How are you doing, mistress?”

“Have a lovely day, my Lady!”

Eurydice nodded to each worker as she passed, tearing her eyes from her paperwork to acknowledge each person who called out to her. She knew all their faces, all their names – she had to. The fourth time a work stopped her on the street to greet her, she gave up and stowed her papers, trying not to think of the hundred pages she needed to read before the morning was over.

She took a deep breath of the still air and calmed herself. With patience and care, everything ran smoothly. Time, dedication, and attentiveness was all that was needed. Her office was only a block away and then—and then she tripped over a crack in the sidewalk, and the rage nearly blinded her.

The supervisor of road maintenance did not have a good morning; Eurydice, however, finished reading her hundred page report and sent in her goals for this quarter’s growth. No riots either. That’s as good of a morning as anyone could ask for.


	2. Some Never Say Goodbye; Some Only Know Goodbye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello!! Thanks for the love on the first chapter! Things have settled down a little bit, so hopefully I can write a smidge faster than every two weeks. At any rate, enjoy!
> 
> As you can probably tell from the 32 chapters I've set, I'm loosely following the structure of the musical. So strap yourself in for a lot of Hades & Persephone the next couple chapters.

People used to tell tall tales about the gods and about the mortals who lived among them. The land was saturated bright and glowing through the words of a thousand poets and the voices of a thousand singers. Monsters roared to life. The heavens shook with wrath. People found each other, cursed each other, loved each other. Maybe that all existed once – who’s to say? People sing about what they see, and people saw dirt. Gods were in the dirt. Mortals were in the dirt. The flowers and the ice and all the animals were in the dirt. So they sang about dirt. Gods and men? They didn’t see much difference. Everybody scrabbled, a little lost, a little hungry, a little tired. Dust to dust, all right.

There was a railroad line. You couldn’t quite see where it started or where it ended, but everybody knew where it went: Hell! Or was it Hades? Someone fussed with a string and strummed, humming. Hades _town_ , that is. Then someone laughed. Hades? You mean that old man begging for work at all hours of the day, winter or summer, sun shining or sky pouring? More fussing with the tuning, soft testing twangs. Then the player raised their head and shouted loud, “Dicetown!”

Someone snickered. Another hollered. Someone in the back said, “That don’t got the same ring to it.”

Well, fair enough. Stories were silly that way.

An older man, one everybody swore they’d seen before yet felt new to them too, piped up and asked, “Why’s it spring?” He sounded a little irritated, as if he should know the answer.

People shrugged and laughed. The world turned and they turned with it. Was there supposed to be more?

“A lady don’t come up here and bring it with her?”

A lady came around all right, but she chased after spring with a grin like they were a pair of lovers. She was a devout follower, not a creator.

“What about, uh…”

“Dicetown!” they shouted.

“Yeah, that,” the man huffed.

People shrugged and laughed. One-way ticket, good work, no air, safe walls. Nobody knew how it got started, and nobody thought to ask. What was the point in asking? Probably wasn’t a very good story.

The player launched into a song.

 

Hades had dozed off with his hat pulled over his eyes when he heard that dear voice: “You’re still sitting in this dump?”

He tilted his back to look up at his wife, her curly hair caught in the breeze and her sharp eyes narrowed at the thin people who sat around him in the dull station. He smiled, fond despite himself of her annoyance, and stretched a hand out for her to haul him to his feet. “It’s the best place to meet, darlin’. Only place that don’t change,” he said.

Persephone snorted and, without looking back at him, gestured for him to follow her. She stepped quick away as if the concrete would burn her if she stood on it too long. “It’s an eyesore. Feels like a damn graveyard.”

Hades rubbed the meat of his palm hard against the top of his leg where the muscle stretched taut and unyielding. “C’mon,” he instructed himself under his breath. He hauled himself to his feet and trailed after her. He paused at the edge of the platform where the grass rose up and tugged at the edge of the concrete. Persephone stood with her back to him, her feet curled in the green that twined around her ankle. The sunshine glowed off her skin, and her dress twisted in the breeze like it wanted to dance. When she turned back to him, he forgot his pains and stumbled off the platform to take her hand, and she forgot the distaste that so easily crumpled her brow and grinned up at him, shining from every pore.

“What should we do to celebrate?” Hades asked, a bit dizzy from the dazzle of her eyes. Every meeting in spring felt like that first time when they were young, like nothing would ever grow cold and nothing would ever die.

“Let me guess – you’ve been boring and haven’t done one interesting thing since I left?” Persephone nudged his shoulder, her voice dramatic in its teasing.

He chuckled, and her smirk softened. “Guilty,” he confessed.

“That’s it then! We’ll get good and liquored up, make fools of ourselves on a dance floor, fill that big ol’ bed…” She dragged him down for a kiss, deep and greedy. “How’s my garden?”

“Dead,” Hades said.

“Dammit!” She swatted him, though she couldn’t muster true anger. “Nothing lasts more than a year with your rotten thumb. I’m surprised the grass don’t die wherever you step.”

He lifted one heavy workboot to check the ground underfoot. “Well, it ain’t that bad at least.”

She howled with laughter at her stoic husband pretending to inspect the ground for rot and kissed him again. And everything was good, just as it always was.


	3. Come Away With Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, hello! Thanks once more for the support! One day I'll be more consistent with updating. Next up is this world's version of Wedding Song, feat. Persephone's old memories. And after that, we'll finally get a glimpse of Orpheus again...

“Don’t you miss this?” Persephone asked.

They lazed together on a hot summer afternoon, lying underneath the spotty shade of the trees, holding hands. She made him feel young, and not in the silly way he was young once, when his palms sweated with nervousness. He felt renewed. Her presence ran a clear stream through him and cleansed those dark, lonely corners. He’d lived here his whole life, but she was the only one that walked beside him and talked to him for hours, touched him like he was flesh and not stone. Years and years later, eternities truly, she could still reach into him and knock loose that boyish earnestness that he swore he had lost. Every time, she uncovered it and showed it to him again, this simple way of being.

“All the time,” Hades said. He had a sunburn already, but he didn’t move. She often teased him he should have been born an underground thing, hissing curses at the sun. He always replied, _But how would I have met you?_

“We could have this all the time,” Persephone said.

Their minds filled with two opposite images:

Persephone imagined a wide road with her husband by her side, finally prized from the clutches of his endless work and set marching towards a better, brighter, warmer tomorrow. She saw his fingers buried in dirt because he wanted to know how it felt. She saw his face under the stars every night for forever, shining brilliantly in the starlight. She saw him smooth-faced, not one ache or complaint in his body or his throat, his sleeves always rolled past his elbows, smiling.

Hades imagined their cozy house covered in snow with his wife sitting by his side, finally grown tired of endless travelling and curled next to him against the bitter cold of the coming days. He saw her chopping firewood and singing loud to keep warm. He saw her huddled underneath the blankets in the evening, drawing him under with her, hair a mess and their breath puffing against each other’s cheeks. He saw her relaxed and lazy, tending her garden in a dozen layers, smiling.

They looked at each other, almost too close to focus. They forgot sometimes with long absence that they each had married a viper, cold and calculating in their own way, with their own great rage.

“Come away with me,” Persephone said.

“Why should I?” Hades rumbled.

“You won’t have to freeze your ass off alone for half a year.”

“You should stay with me,” Hades said.

“What, and freeze _my_ ass off for half a year?” Persephone growled, her voice scraping rough like she was about to spit razorblades.

“Wouldn’t be alone, wouldya?” he said, hammering his anger into a smooth plane. “Would it be so bad?”

They were upright, hair still flattened from lying down. Persephone snarled, fighting vertigo. “You can starve if you want, but I’d rather do something that makes life worth living. You remember what living is, Hades? It’s what _this_ is.” She waves between them, their tense muscles and crackling anger. “Come away with me.”

Hades chuckled deep in his chest and fell back on the leaflitter. “You’re the most selfish woman I’ve ever met. You—”

“Take a look in the fucking mirror! You sit around here—”

“— _work_ , you mean, and I do it—”

“—don’t listen to a damn word I say—”

They tired themselves, and the argument passed, but the poison still tainted the air around them. Persephone tended her garden, and Hades pulled on his boots and went searching for work. They ate dinner together, Hades falling asleep with a spoon in his mouth and Persephone bouncing and twitching with energy.

“Come away with me,” she said, again and again.

Hades wanted to be angry (Persphone wanted him to be angry), but he was too damn tired. He made a good showing a few times, a flash that soon fizzled, but he wasn’t young anymore. In the full blistering heat of summer, his head filled with the frost of winter, how his cupboards would be empty.

“I might not starve if you were there to help me,” he told her.

She blasted him with her fury like a spring thunderstorm. “Or we’d both starve!”

He let her yell. She tried to needle him, prodding at his weak spots and hoping he’d kick her back. This was their new story. No more exhilarating whirlwinds or bitter duties parting them but a tired resignation that sucked away at the good times and dulled the bad like a numbing cold lingering always in their bones.

“It’s always goddamn winter with you,” Persephone griped.

Underneath the spotty shady of the trees, warm air pressing in around them, they laid beside each other, hands a twitch away from touching. Neither of them moved. The wind whistled through the branches, hinting at a melody before it fell into whipping chaos, so loud and demanding they couldn’t have spoken if they tried.


End file.
